Ostrow: Mayberry set the standard for the rural TV that continues today

Far from the suburban living rooms of “Father Knows Best,” and the mean streets of “Dragnet” and “Peter Gunn,” a different kind of environs found a place in American television more than 50 years ago, thanks to Andy Griffith and Mayberry.

The persistent form of rural TV shows owes a debt to Andy Griffith, who died today at 86.

Turns out, from Mayberry to Pawnee is not such a leap.

Griffith put the tiny make-believe haven of Mayberry, N.C., on the TV map with “The Andy Griffith Show” in 1960, and gave rise to other small town, Main Street USA shows, laced with cornball humor and country wisdom.

Until Griffith’s Mayberry Sheriff came on the scene, television was centered in New York duplexes (as in Danny Thomas’ show, from which the Andy Taylor character spun off), urban police stations and hospitals, and suburban ranches and Colonials (“Leave It to Beaver.”)

Enter the fishin’ hole.

The tiny Mayberry, where gentle, always humble and polite Sheriff Andy kept order and dispensed wisdom, was a classic American idyll, a fictional distillation of all that was right about the dirt-road burgs of a rapidly industrialized country. Sheriff Andy, Aunt Bea and Opie were proud residents of an unreal but revered spot on the map, a place of community… It’s a place TV has dreamed of ever since, “where everybody knows your name,” where friends promise “I’ll be there for you.”

And it surprised network executives who had initially rejected Griffith’s humor as too corny and backward for the mass appeal medium.

Without Mayberry, we wouldn’t have had a host of out-of-the-way corners of the world where a slower pace allowed for gentle character development, hilarious discussions of inconsequential matters and age-old life lessons.

“Green Acres,” was “the place to be” unless you were at The Junction, “Petticoat Junction.” Those situation comedies paved the way for the Southern fried variety show “Hee Haw,” impossibly corny but embraced well beyond rural America.

In more recent years, Mayberry spawned Cicely, Alaska, home to “Northern Exposure,” and Stars Hollow, Conn., setting of “The Girlmore Girls.” In both cases, quirky locals offered sage observations about the illogical ways of city folk, playing anthropologist to those unlucky suckers crammed in high-rises, fighting for parking and not on a first-name basis with their neighbors.

Without Mayberry, Rob Morrow’s Dr. Joel Fleischman would not have had his provincial New York mind opened to Native American and backwoods viewpoints.

Without Mayberry, the twisted “Twin Peaks” would not have had the chance to upend our vision of idyllic rural life in a fictional Washington village.

Without Mayberry, Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope would not be an aspiring small-town politician, worrying about the minutia of eensy parks and waterfountains, touting the wonders of the equally fictional Pawnee, Indiana.